First of all I want to give a birthday shoutout to mom on Wednesday and Ty on Sunday. Also for anyone that is interested, my mission president and his wife made a new Facebook page, which is Tahiti Papeete Mission-Fox . This week had its ups and downs, that's for sure! We are going through some medical trials at the moment, with my infected toe that got pretty nasty this week, as well as with all of Elder Thorpe's various ailments. He's had a rough go recently, between the hole in his shin that's been infected 3 different times, his sprained ankle, some sickness that gave him a cough, runny nose and fatigue, and then the newest problem, a sharp pain in his ribs that makes it so he can barely breath. I'm pretty sure his body is just breaking down on him after two years. My goal is just to get him through these last two weeks so that he makes it on the plane alive and in one piece.
But as I said we had some ups as well. This week, despite all of the trials, we worked really hard, and had quite a bit of success. We found 7 new investigators this week, and were able to double the number of investigators at church this Sunday compared against the number that we have had the last few weeks. At the moment we don't have any baptisms fixed but we have several investigators that are very potential, that we should be able to fix in the next week or two.
Alright now for the rundown of the week...so on Tuesday my toe was hurting pretty bad, and we pretty swollen and gross. So I decided to ignore it and go out for the day despite the pain. In the morning we were able to find a family of new investigators from a reference that we had gotten, which was awesome. We came home and ate after that, and then went and met with on of our other investigators named V., a 19 year old girl that is a little bit slow mentally, and the sister of a recent convert. We did our coordination meeting after that with our DMP, and then went on a split with him to see another new investigator, and then ate with him and his wife at the roulette.
On Wednesday when I woke up in the morning, my toe was leaking pus all over, and was super red and swollen. I was tempted to just ignore it and work for the day again, because we had a pretty big day planned out as well. But as soon as I tried to walk on it, I knew that there was no way I was getting on a bike, I couldn't even walk. So we had to call the zone leaders to take me to the doctor. Elder Lewis came and worked with my companion, and then I went with Elder Rice all the way to Taravao to see the doctor. We had to wait forever to get in, and then he cleaned up my toe, and fave me some french bandages (in other words, gauze and tape, there is no such thing as bandaids here, which kinda stinks) as well a some antibiotics. We did a couple of lessons in their area after that, and then we went and switched back.
Luckily on Thursday we had our multilane conference, so I didn't have to go anywhere on bike or anything. We had a really good conference, the assistants and President gave some pretty good trainings. We came home after that, and then went over to our amp's house for his birthday party. We had barbecue and talked about his mission.
On Friday we had a lesson in the morning, and then did our district meeting, which we almost always do at our house, because our district is tiny, and that way we can eat afterwards. Elder Thorpe was actually super sick tho, so after the district meeting our zone leader stayed at the house and did their weekly planning while my companion slept, and I went on a split with dmp to the lessons that we had planned. We were supposed to go tot the temple with our recent converts after that to do baptisms for the dead for their first times, but our ride left without us...kind of a bummer, but at least our converts went anyways. So we ended up going with the zone leaders to their baptism that night, and then went to the Heiva in Mataiea with them, which was pretty dope.
We actually had a pretty decent day on Saturday. Normally Saturdays and Sundays are super rough, because everyone goes to the beach to drink and play pétanque, and no one is at home. We were able to finish up our weekly planning in the morning, and then got a bunch of lessons in after lunch, including finding 2 new investigators And then for dinner we ate with our bishop at this house.
Yesterday we had a bunch of investigators at church, which was awesome. After church we had a lesson with M., and then with another new investigator that came from a reference. That was when Elder Thorpe's chest started hurting and he was having a hard time breathing, so we headed back home to make sure that he didn't die on me. Kind of a bummer tho, on the way home this huge dog came and took a big chunk out of my thigh and tore up my pants, so I was up fixing my pants forever last night. This morning we went to the doctor for his chest, and turns out he has some lung infection...probably not so good. Kinda funny tho, the private doctor sent us on a wild goose chase to go get an Xray for Elder Thorpe, but we had no car and no idea where the hospital was...so we walked around and finally found the hospital, but we were on the back side of it...this crazy janitor let us in a prohibited access door, and then the door slid shut, locking us inside. We tried all of the doors on the inside, and all were locked but one. When we are out we were at the very back of the C-section surgery place, definitely not where we were supposed to be. Some nurse asked us what in the world we were doing there and I said, "uhhh I think we're lost" hahaha way funny we had a good laugh. No worries tho we eventually found the X-ray from haha.
Well that's about it for this week! I love you all, have a good week!
Elder McQuiston
Pics: The first 2 pics are from the Heiva the third is a pic with the sunset, and the fourth is a pic with amp and his wife
